cocktail

I'm back from the Bay Islands, and had an absolutely amazing time - many fantastic adventures... Rum was the drink of choice, so I enjoyed lots of delicious fruity cocktails made with Flor De Caña. Danny at West Peak Inn scored some fresh coconuts for us - a total treat. This was my favourite way to enjoy one of these:

have someone experienced with machetes and coconuts hack one of these open for you. A hole about the size of a quarter in one end is all you need.

drink about 1/3 of the milk with a straw

pour in 1-2 shots of white rum

fill the rest with fresh sweetened lime juice (or the juice of a lime and simple syrup or other sweetener)

This weekend while visiting my cousin in Guelph, we ended up wandering into a little town called Elora. Here we found a tiny Japanese tea shop - to our delight! The owner was an enthusiastic tea master from Japan, who gave us the low-down on matcha tea. (I'm sipping some high quality organic matcha tea as I write - mmm...)

We scored great quality matcha tea along with special bamboo whisk and scoop, as well as the tea master's blend of matcha with cane sugar to share with our lovely hosts.

With the matcha/sugar mix, we spontaneously concocted these gorgeous
delicious (stimulating!) matcha martinis. (I googled "macha martini" and, as I suspected, others have made variations of this cocktail.)

Here are some lovely little Rosemary Oat Cakes - this time made with poppy-seeds. Originally, I made these savory little cocktail crackers with sesame seeds. The poppy-seeds are smaller, which helps them adhere better to the dough - particularly when slicing through. The flavour and visual contrast the poppy-seeds provide is also pretty special :-)

Lovely round cockltail crackers: oats and olive oil make these rich and flakey.

I came up with these lovely little oat crackers to satisfy my craving for crunchy savory things. These are somewhat similar to Scottish oat cakes - only made with olive oil and ground seeds instead of butter/lard. Rosemary adds a fragrant Mediterranean touch, and sesame seeds round out the rich nutty flavor.

These pretty little rounds make great cocktail crackers and work wonderfully on a cheese plate. These are fantastic as is, and even better topped with: